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Category: Tennis

  • Quinnipiac and Fairfield on collision course for winner-take-all MAAC tennis regular season finales

    Quinnipiac and Fairfield on collision course for winner-take-all MAAC tennis regular season finales

    By Carlos Calo Rodríguez and Toni Wetmore

    Both MAAC regular season tennis titles could be decided by the season’s final matches. Quinnipiac and Fairfield’s men’s and women’s programs were ranked in the top two in the preseason coaches poll, and an end-of-season date between the in-state rivals could determine who finishes on top this spring.  

    QUSportsPage’s Carlos Calo Rodriguez and Toni Wetmore broke down players to watch and storylines to monitor ahead of the April 17 matchup between the Bobcats and Stags.

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    Key players

    The Bobcats will rely on the defending MAAC Player of the Year, Czechia native Daniel Velek, who is in his graduate year in Hamden, to keep pushing the team forward. Velek holds the No. 1 spot on both singles and doubles for the Bobcats. After posting a 17-8 record last season, he’s remained a crucial part of the Bobcats’ six-match winning streak, despite dealing with minor injuries this year.

    Velek holds a 7-3 record in MAAC play and has found chemistry in doubles play with first-year James Lorenzetti, with the pair going 4-1 through the first five conference matches. In singles, sophomores Carlos Braun Simo and Finn Burridge each boast a 4-1 singles record so far in conference play.

    Graduate transfer Alex Yang, who came by way of SMU, has been reliable in singles with a 4-1 record. Doubles, however, haven’t met expectations. Yang was anticipated to be a strong doubles partner for Velek, but the pairing didn’t click during the first tournaments of Spring. They went 0-3 in the first three tournaments playing together. Yang has only played one doubles match in MAAC competition and won it 6-3 vs. Siena, pairing with first-year Elias Hoxha. 

    Head-to-head against the Stags

    Quinnipiac holds an 8-7 edge in the all-time series since the 2008 season.

    Their most recent meeting was in the MAAC Tournament final last April when the Bobcats defeated the Stags 4-2 to clinch their first-ever NCAA Tournament appearance. On April 17, the stakes will once again be high, as both teams are expected to battle for the top seed and the regular season crown in what could be the match of the year. The Bobcats (5-0) are sitting in the No. 1 spot in the MAAC, while Fairfield (2-1) is currently No. 3 after falling to Siena on April 6. 

    What’s next?

    Two matches remain before facing the Stags: Mount St. Mary’s on April 12 and Sacred Heart on April 13. Last season, the Bobcats beat Sacred Heart 4-3 and Mount St. Mary’s 6-1. Their only regular-season loss came against Fairfield, in a match that — like this year — was the final fixture of the regular season for Quinnipiac. 

    “Fairfield has the talent, and they have become our rival,” Quinnipiac men’s coach Bryan Adinolfi told the Quinnipiac Chronicle in early March. “Siena, Marist, and Niagara all have good teams as well. In my opinion, everyone is good, and no match will be easy, and everyone will have to fight for those six spots in the conference tournament to win the whole thing. In a sense that makes it really exciting, because our work ethic and team chemistry and all those things actually matter.”

    With both teams unbeaten in conference play, the April 17 showdown will likely determine the MAAC regular-season champion and the No. 1 seed for the conference championships at Mercer County Tennis Park in West Windsor, New Jersey.

    WOMEN’S

    Key players

    First-year Bobcat Willow Renton won MAAC Player of the Week twice this season. The first came after her performance on the road at Niagara on Feb. 28, earning the No. 1 spot for singles and doubles. Renton and Caitlin Flower were paired for the doubles match and won 6-2.

    Renton then went 4-0 in her doubles and singles matches against Merrimack and Rider on March 29 and 30, respectively, all at the No. 1 spot. Her dominance is helping to propel the Bobcats toward an undefeated conference season.

    While Renton lost her singles match against Siena this past weekend, her and Flower stayed in the win column in the doubles match with a 6-1 victory. Renton will look to regain her momentum as the Fairfield match gets closer and closer.

    Flower won her singles match against Siena’s Andrea Vargas 6-3 and 6-4, making up for Renton’s loss. The team will need these two to continue to dominate together and individually to stay in the win column.

    Head-to-head against the Stags

    Same as the men’s team, the last time these two teams met was in the 2024 MAAC Championship, which Fairfield won 4-3. 

    Flower feels the team is more prepared to face Fairfield this time around.

    “We have been really successful in the past against Fairfield, and I think we kinda underestimated them a little bit,” Flower told The Quinnipiac Chronicle in early March. “When we lost, it was a little bit of a surprise. This year, we’re focusing on taking it really seriously and putting in the work that needs to be put in to have a successful season and hopefully get the win at the end.”

    What’s next?

    The Bobcats will look to extend their win streak to six on Saturday for the last home match of the season. Quinnipiac will face Mount St. Mary’s, which currently sits in eighth in the MAAC with one conference win.

    Then it’s a matchup at Sacred Heart, which is seventh in the MAAC at 2-3.

    The Bobcats wrap up their regular season against undefeated No. 2 Fairfield. While Quinnipiac is 5-0 in MAAC play, Fairfield has only played two conference matches. 

    This April 17 matchup could be a preview of a fourth-consecutive MAAC title matchup for these two Connecticut powerhouses.

  • Everything you need to know about Quinnipiac men’s tennis this season

    Everything you need to know about Quinnipiac men’s tennis this season

    By Sam Vetto and Ben Yeargin

    April 21, 2024, may have seemed like an ordinary day for everyone else. It wasn’t a holiday, it simply was just another Sunday in April. But not for the Quinnipiac men’s tennis team, who won its first MAAC Championship on that day.

    Then-senior Donovan Brown played his final point against Fairfield graduate student Griffin Schlesinger and was immediately dogpiled by the rest of the team following an out-of-bounds return. The team hugged each other, celebrated and jumped around following it.

    Now as Quinnipiac looks to make another run at the MAAC Championship, the team looks a little different

    As the Bobcats — unanimously voted No. 1 in the MAAC preseason coaches poll — look to repeat this season, QU Sports Page’s Sam Vetto and Benjamin Yeargin bring to you everything you need to know about men’s tennis.

    Roster

    During Quinnipiac’s MAAC Tournament run last season, it used six players total in both the doubles and singles points. Two of those six are no longer with the team.

    Shaurya Sood and Ayato Arakaki — the former team captain — both graduated in the spring, which leaves holes in the Bobcats top six.

    Thankfully for Quinnipiac, it has the depth to counter that. The Bobcats retained reigning MAAC Player of the Year graduate Daniel Velek as well as mainstays in sophomores Finn Burridge and Carlos Braun Simo.

    Velek, Burridge and Braun Simo will play a lot in the upcoming slate, with all of them hoping to add to their positive win-loss records in singles play. None of that trio has lost over eight singles sets.

    But Velek lost his main doubles partner in Sood which went 19-9 overall. Brown also lost Arakaki; they went 12-12 together last season.

    So who has Quinnipiac turned to to complete its top six? Mainly freshmen and graduate student Alex Yang, who transferred in from SMU. In the Bobcats 7-0 loss to Brown on Feb. 7, all of the aforementioned played but freshmen James Lorenzetti and Elias Hoxha each took a spot in the six-man rotation.

    Head coach Brian Adinolfi has shaken up the doubles by splitting Burridge and Braun Simo. He’s paired Simo with Lorenzetti and Burridge with Hoxha. To fill in Sood’s spot with Velek, Adinolfi has turned to Yang. They haven’t won a point together.

    Brown — who played in two matches in Quinnipiac’s fall slate — has not played any of the spring slate.

    Additionally, the Bobcats carry five players that act as depth. Juniors Csanad Nyaradi and Gaurav Mootha and senior Yasha Laskin have spent their entire college careers at Quinnipiac. Freshmen Vishal Prakash and Carl Sjoholm join for their first MAAC campaign.

    If the Bobcats want to repeat, they need Velek, Burridge and Braun Simo to carry the load. Otherwise, they’ll walk into the summer dreaming about what could’ve been.

    The Returner

    Velek is returning to the team where he made his mark on the MAAC. The Czech athlete, who was the 2023-24 MAAC player of the year, lost his previous doubles partner this past break, but replaced him with a new graduate student in Alex Yang.

    Velek went 17-8 in singles competition over the past year, as well as 19-9 in doubles with his former partner, Sood. A big question going into this season for the returning MAAC POTY is how will his new partnership affect performance?

    While the team has played one event since the start of the new year, Yang and Velek lost 1-6 to Penn State’s Reiya Hittori and Marcus Shoeman. This is something to keep in mind as the season goes on, but it is something to be taken with a grain of salt.

    Although this new duo is fresh it is expected to make mistakes, a real sense of potential for the future of this duo can begin being stenciled in as the rest of the season progresses. Be prepared for a bump or two in the road, but with a player as strong as Velek returning to this roster, don’t be surprised if they end up figuring it out as the season goes on.

    The New Face

    Alex Yang, fresh off a stint at SMU, took his skills north to Hamden. The former Bronco came off an off year, going 5-3 in singles, as well as 1-1 in doubles playing in both mixed and standard doubles.

    While numbers may be slim here in 2023-24, Yang made his mark in 2021-2022 where he made Second Team All-UAA and was named captain.

    The right-hander is coming in with a bevy of experience in big moments. With the graduate student looking to take a step up, the real question will come from his performances going forward, as well as his success being paired up with Velek.

    Schedule

    The Bobcats have gone to NJIT, Penn State, St. John’s, Brown and Cornell — who have lost a combined three points — to start the season. So far, Quinnipiac has only won two points in its first five matches. That was because Lorenzetti’s opponent Penn State freshman Shrikeshav Murugesan was injured and couldn’t continue.

    The Bobcats home opener is Saturday, Feb. 15 against Monmouth in North Haven, Connecticut. They’re at home again next weekend when they take on Bryant.

    Although they do have courts on the Quinnipiac Mount Carmel Campus, the cold weather prevents Quinnipiac from playing on them until mid-March.

    The Bobcats have a seven-match away stretch throughout the end of February and middle of March that’s punctuated with a MAAC semifinals rematch against Marist on March 22. The Red Foxes were picked to finish No. 5 in the coaches poll.

    Then, Quinnipiac has a five-match homestand highlighted by a match against Siena on April 5. The Saints went 1-5 in MAAC play in 2024, only beating Mount St. Mary’s.

    To close out the season the Bobcats have a MAAC finals rematch against Fairfield, at Fairfield. That game could be a pivotal turning point and potentially a preview for the MAAC Tournament, which will happen a week after that match.

    Only the top four teams will make it to the Mercer County Park Tennis Center in April. Quinnipiac will look to play its way to a conference trophy for the second year in a row.